The industrial back-set of the South meant of course but one thing: the discovery of the paradox of slavery, the turning from the mistake, and the adoption of remedial measures which should usher into the South the same industrial revolution in methods of work which Europe saw begin a century ago. This is exactly what has happened, and to-day the Industrial Revolution is beginning south of Mason and Dixon's line. The forecast of change was apparent by 1850. Slavery still paid then--was still an economic success, but only under conditions which became more and more impossible of realization because of the factory system and the new industrial conditions in the rest of the world (see Note 3). It was, in other words, an attempt at an industrial system with the lowest wages, the most oppressive labor laws, and the best natural advantages. Such a system at such a time carried its own sentence of death: fertile land was becoming scarce in the forties, the horrors of the slave trade had shocked even the eighteenth century, and southern labor laws which made knowledge a crime and migration of laborers a capital offense, simply could not be enforced. It was in vain that the solidly united capitalistic classes of the South threw themselves bodily into the fray--raped Mexico, filibustered in Cuba and Central America, encouraged slave-smuggling (see Note 4), and bullied the hesitating North; their economic doom was written even if militant Abolitionism had not appeared. The economic student could have foretold and did foretell easily in the forties and fifties that slavery in the South was doomed (see Note 5): even if all available territory had been thrown wide to the slave system, slavery could not possibly have stayed in Kansas and Utah, in New Mexico or in Arizona; it could have stayed only temporarily in Missouri and in Texas. It had already reached its territorial limit, it was bound to have evolved something different. It will always be an interesting speculation as to how soon this economic necessity would have been recognized; whether the South would have had the acumen eventually to see the end, and what sort of gradual change could have come about, had it not been for the political crisis precipitated in 1861. Then came the war--that disgraceful episode of civil strife when, leaving the arguments of men, the nation appealed to the last resort of dogs, murdering and ravishing each other for four long shameful years (see Note 6).